Tag: healthcare
Augmented Reality in Healthcare: Use Cases, Examples, and Trends
It’s no joke or a mere sci-fi theory! We’re experiencing the impact of Augmented Reality in healthcare, right in front of us. Using an AR-enabled head-mounted device, a surgeon can review patient vitals during a medical procedure without juggling multiple devices or displays. In doing so, they are less likely to misread or misinterpret the data.
Head-mounted displays, wearables, and mobile apps drive interactions between the physical world and virtual objects to improve the quality of healthcare delivery and patient experience. Just like how AI and data analytics improve your caregiving organization’s day-to-day operations, AR presents valuable opportunities for healthcare professionals and providers, payers, medical devices, and other players in the healthcare ecosystem. If you are looking forward to enhancing your healthcare organization’s performance, operations, user experience, and profits, you cannot bypass AR. All things considered, who wouldn’t like to augment their existing business processes instead of spending heavily on enabling new processes?
Data Source: Statista
According to ResearchAndMarkets, the global AR market will generate $152 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 36%, whereas the global AR healthcare market is expected to register a CAGR of 26% during the forecast period (2022-2027).
How Is Augmented Reality Creating An Impact In Healthcare?
Augmented Reality (AR) allows us to experience the real-life environment around us with a digital augmentation overlaid on it. AR works by integrating digital information or content into the user’s environment in real-time. In AR, the objects that reside in the real-world are enhanced using computer-generated capabilities. AR includes graphics, effects, sounds, text, and touch feedback to improve the user experience. In this technology, the user interacts with virtual objects placed in the real world.
Three essential components of AR include:
- Integration of real and virtual worlds
- Interaction with the objects in real-time
- Registration in 3D (The process by which AR applications can obtain a reference spatial framework to place the virtual objects so that they match the expected location with respect to the real ones.)
Due to its versatility, AR is becoming more accessible and affordable for medical imaging, medical education, dentistry, and nurses’ training.
The Most Impactful AR Trends in Healthcare Today
These ground-breaking AR trends in healthcare are expected to act as a magical boon that will help healthcare professionals overcome several medical limitations.
Robotic-Assisted Surgery (RAS) systems are gaining popularity in recent times as they improve surgical precision and dexterity, and provide better access to minimally-invasive procedures. Combining robotic-assisted surgery with AR offers an advanced interface which will enhance user perception. The ability of AR to improve situational awareness will tremendously advance the surgeon’s ability to make better decisions, in real-time. Robotic hepatic surgery, intraoperative reconstructions and tracking systems, robotic liver resections, preoperative imaging and 3D rendering, intra-operative robotic ultrasound application, etc. are some of the RAS fields which will be transformed by AR in the coming years.
The traditional methods used to assess wound parameters are mostly inaccurate, rough, and painful for the patient. Augmented Reality enables non-invasive assessment of wound parameters by providing visual feedback on the wound healing status. An accurate 3D model of the wound integrates AR functionalities based on a miniaturized projector to demonstrate wound progression. The availability of objective patient data allows doctors to suggest the right follow-up therapies and exercises. It also enables nurses to dress the wound properly. AR-based wound healing assessment offers patients a better understanding of their ailment, so their compliance to the doctor’s advice will improve significantly.
The healthcare industry is slowly realizing the game-changing benefits of AR in physiotherapy and behavioral treatment. Using AR in physiotherapy sessions increases patient engagement and improves physical outcomes. The data gathered from each session allows the physiotherapist to evaluate the outcomes better. AR makes way for a new, unobtrusive method of intervention in motor and cognitive rehabilitation by offering a safe environment for patients to practice movements and orient their exercises. It leads to greater patient motivation and enables caregivers to provide low-cost physiotherapy at home.
AR technology is an efficient time-saver that allows doctors to access patient charts from the EMR system and project the details in their area of vision, while attending a patient. AR glasses and interactive AR charts free doctors and nurses from thumbing reams of papers and documentation. Cloud-based data storage ensures that patient records are never misplaced, misfiled, damaged, or lost. Physicians can simply scan a patient’s hospital wristband and view the entire patient history which is retrieved by AR from the EMR database. It leads to a more meaningful patient-doctor relationship and saves the time taken for diagnosis and decision-making.
Multiple floors and buildings as well as insufficient maps or signage in large hospital facilities make indoor and outdoor wayfinding complex for patients, visitors, and entry-level medical trainees. Development of calibrated smartphone cameras and recent advances in computer graphics algorithms help simplify complex AR experiences in a larger environment, such as a multi-storeyed building. Using the patient’s phone camera, AR places virtual arrows on top of the images of their actual surroundings in real-time, enabling patients to navigate medical facilities with ease. Patients can effortlessly orient themselves in a hospital building and quickly reach their desired location by taking the shortest route.
Popular Uses of AR in Healthcare Today
- Accurate vein detection to draw blood
- Retrieve patient records faster
- Enable easy viewing of EMRs
- Simplify medical jargon for patients
- Assist surgeons during operations
- Guide medical practitioners to dress wounds
Fingent’s AR team develops customized AR applications to improve the quality of your HCO’s service and care, cut costs, and address your business requirements in the most efficient way. Connect with our team to learn more.
7 Real-Life Applications and Examples of AR in Healthcare
From medical training to patient care, diagnosis, monitoring, and other practical uses, AR is well-equipped to transform the healthcare industry. Here are some of the top applications of AR in healthcare:
1. Immersive and Interactive Medical Training
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reports that the United States could see an estimated shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care. AR-enabled virtualized training provides deeper insights into the nuances of body functions, enabling medical practitioners to address more critical cases in a given period of time.
FlexAR offers medical students a tangible, AR-powered anatomy learning experience using a prototype tool. The app gives users both written and 3D visual information about anatomy without the need for traditional study materials and cadaver dissections. Ohio-based Case Western Reserve University uses Microsoft HoloLens devices to study human anatomy where an entire class can view the same life-sized 3D image at once.
2. Training Physicians on New Therapies
Life sciences companies can use AR to educate care providers on the latest therapies and drugs that improve treatment outcomes. Companies can create compelling illustrations depicting the impacts of a disease or a virus on the human body at different stages and virtually demonstrate how the situation can be brought under control through novel treatment procedures, therapies, and drugs.
Application of Augmented Reality enhances the collaboration between the pharmaceutical community and doctors. The information collected by doctors using AR-based data visualization tools enable medical R&D teams to expedite the study of genetic data related to specific microbes. This paces up the discovery of drugs that can effectively combat the microbes. VisMol system, developed by Sygnature Discovery, uses Microsoft HoloLens technology to create an AR world that facilitates drug discovery collaboration.
3. Virtualizing Surgeries
Surgeons can leverage AR to create digital models of complicated surgeries that include multiple sub-steps and critical deviations requiring careful analysis and planning. The digital model of an entire surgery process details every step of the operation, allowing surgeons to optimize the sequence based on in-depth virtual analysis. As a result, surgeons will be better prepared to handle contingencies and lay out the course of action in advance, before entering the operating suite.
xvision Spine System developed by Augmedics (Chicago, IL), is a cutting-edge AR surgical guidance system that allows surgeons to “see” the patient’s anatomy through skin and tissue just like how they view X-rays. The X-ray like vision allows surgeons to accurately navigate instruments and implants during spine procedures.
4. Accurate Symptom Detection
Several patients find it challenging to explain their current health conditions to doctors. Some patients may exaggerate their symptoms, while others share only minimal information. This could result in incorrect diagnosis and wrong therapy. AR solves this problem by offering patients a simple and handy way to check their symptoms and current health status all by themselves. Doctors can also analyze the health reports projected by AR and suggest accurate remedies and lifestyle improvement therapies to help the patient stay fit and healthy.
EyeDecide AR app uses a camera display to simulate a patient’s eye anatomy, conditions, and solutions. The app describes each condition, annotates symptoms and findings adjacent to each medical image, and suggests treatment based on best practices. This allows the doctor to examine the symptoms precisely. The patient is also spared from any kind of communication challenge.
5. Patient Self-care
AR-enabled healthcare software solutions allows patients to become proactive in their own care. Physiotherapy and physical rehabilitation are two of the self-care areas where AR can be highly beneficial. By watching AR-based digital demonstrations of their bodily motions and actions, patients can refine their movements to restore physical fitness. Patients can also point their smartphone camera towards a city landscape to find information about nearby hospitals and get the direction to reach their destination.
Know My Heart and Know My Beat are two of the leading patient self-care apps designed specifically to use AR technology. The first app enables an individual patient to self-check their pulse and detect possible AF (Atrial Fibrillation). The second app aims to educate patients who have been diagnosed with AF to be more aware of their health condition so that they adhere to the prescribed medication and seek timely medical aid, when required.
6. Vein Visualization
Injecting intravenous shots or collecting blood samples for medical tests is a painful and unpleasant experience for many patients, particularly if the patient’s vein is missed in the first instance. Thanks to AR handheld scanner technology and near-infrared imaging, a nurse can easily see the vein to take blood or give a jab. The handheld scanner projects veins over the skin to prevent injection failures in patients and improve the first injection success ratio.
AccuVein’s vein finder uses AR technology to find a patient’s vein at the very first try of an IV start or a blood draw. The vein finder is a portable handheld device supported by a digital laser projection, a laser-based scanner, and a processing system. Projection-based AR allows the user to view a real-time virtual image of the underlying vasculature on top of the skin. Using AR for vein visualization has helped improve the first-time vein detection success rate by 3.5 times.
7. Medical Imaging
AR displays in operating rooms leverage sophisticated algorithms to convert CT imaging (Computed Tomography scan) into a dense 3D map of structures. Based on the surgical procedure’s requirements, this 3D map can be displayed on a nearby screen, through a headset, or projected onto the patient. Thus, AR technology provides surgeons an enhanced surgical field to sketch a detailed operating plan, well ahead of the first incision. Similarly, arteries and tumor structures can be superimposed into an operating field display to enable more accurate real-time viewing of underlying tissues, organ motions, and deformations.
Immersive Touch’s image-guided AR platform provides surgeons with 3D holographic “X-Ray vision” through the skin that visualizes patient specific anatomy intra-operatively. It aims to offer detailed anatomical data of the patient at various surgical phases. The platform helps surgeons navigate their instruments accurately without losing sight of the patient.
Watch Video: How AR can be a powerful learning tool in the future
Practical Use Cases of AR in Healthcare
AR in Bioinformatics
AR in Pharmaceutical Marketing
AR-based Telemedicine
AR-aided Collaborative Surgeries
AR in Prenatal, Neonatal, and Postnatal Care
AR in Bioinformatics
Augmented Reality can complement traditional visualization techniques which will create a major breakthrough in the field of structural bioinformatics. AR can be used to develop highly understandable and impactful 3D visualizations of complex biomolecules. The widespread popularity of mobile devices helps extend AR to the end-user in a simple and inexpensive way. Users can view the 3D visualization of biomolecules using their smartphones and interact with it in an AR environment. This increases student motivation and understanding and also simplifies data analysis in bioinformatics.
AR in Pharmaceutical Marketing
Soon AR will make “show, don’t tell” the new maxim in pharmaceutical marketing. By projecting 3D images and visualizations into what’s being viewed in the real-world, AR presents an incredible opportunity for pharma companies to virtually showcase their marketing materials to potential clients. For example, a customized AR software can be used to create a 3D model of the human heart to demonstrate how a particular drug functions and its effects post intake. This offers healthcare professionals deeper insights into the benefits of new pharma products and also helps them explain to their patients how a new treatment or medication will work.
AR-based Telemedicine
Custom healthcare AR applications are being developed to train medical students and lab assistants to successfully operate, assemble, disassemble, transport, and maintain complex medical devices or systems. One of the best examples of AR in telemedicine services is training unskilled users to perform ECG tests. Through interactive virtual simulations powered by AR, untrained users can interact with the ECG device and understand how to properly place ECG electrodes on a patient’s chest. Dearth of skilled service providers is a major obstacle in implementing telemedicine. We hope that AR could fill the gap soon.
AR-aided Collaborative Surgeries
When the chief surgeon is miles away and there is no specialist nearby to attend a critical patient, AR comes to the rescue. Collaborative surgeries, made possible through AR video conferencing, can be life-savers. Clinicians in possession of the right AR tools can collaborate with their colleagues who are located far away and receive instructions in real-time. Platforms like Proprio combine AR and machine learning to generate 3D medical images with extra precision, allowing medical experts located anywhere to team up, discuss surgical tactics, and perform the procedure successfully.
AR in Prenatal, Neonatal, and Postnatal Care
AR can be leveraged to offer expectant mothers and new moms a multisensory educational experience by visualizing how they need to care for themselves and their newborns. The Australian Breastfeeding Association utilizes AR to develop engaging tutorials featuring key concepts related to breastfeeding, such as guidance and counseling services for new moms, which boosts their confidence and alleviates postpartum blues. AR-based visualizations can replace the dreary literature in textbooks and provide a positive experience for new moms, which they will quickly understand and remember.
Future of Augmented Reality in healthcare
The increased use of smartphones and other mobile gadgets will augment AR-driven healthcare practices and service delivery in the future. Some of the most-awaited AR-led transformations in healthcare are listed here.
1. AR in Dental Practice
In recent times, AR is being employed in pre-clinical dental education and operative dentistry learning. From a clinical perspective, maxillofacial, orthognathic, oral, and implant surgeries will be increasingly aided by AR in the coming years. In endodontics procedures, video tools optimized using AR are being used to detect orifices for accessing root canals. AR also helps dentists to place brackets in orthodontics through 3D image-based tooth-tracking. The ability of AR to enhance spatial visual perception will go a long way in pre-clinical practices, such as designing treatment cavities for student analysis and learning.
2. AR for Psychomotor Skills Training
AR training tools facilitate spatial and psychomotor skills training in the medical domain. While interacting with virtual objects superimposed on physical environments, learners get real-time feedback leading to positive learning outcomes. An interactive AR hand hygiene training tool for healthcare workers developed by a team of researchers from Ireland and Scotland enabled 81% of participants in the pilot program to attain proficiency after two-minute practice sessions. In the coming years, AR will increase the scope of self-directed skills-based training, improving skill acquisition and retention.
3. AR to Gamify Workout Sessions
AR can lower healthcare costs considerably, save thousands of lives, and improve our standard of living drastically. Even if you are working out from home, you can livestream and workout with others digitally using AR apps like FitTech. Even a monotonous morning walk can be made more enjoyable using AR. Apps such as “Zombies, Run!” can gamify daily running tasks, motivating users to take care of their health more seriously. Medical imaging and diagnosis will be simplified, and dietitians and nutritionists can use the findings to encourage people to bring desirable changes to their lifestyles.
How Fingent Can Help You with AR Services
Fingent is a high-end custom software development company that helps businesses -small and large- across the globe with innovative solutions. We provide a wide array of software development services from software customization to building Web, Mobile, Enterprise, and Cloud applications across various industries.
Our team at Fingent helps you develop customized healthcare AR applications that improve the quality of your HCO’s service and care, cut costs, and address your business requirements in the most efficient way. Build your brand, increase your brand identity, promote your products and services, and gain a competitive advantage with our AR consulting, development, and implementation services.
Fingent’s custom AR services are garnished with:
- Transparent project management
- Specialized AR and VR teams
- Access to the latest, best-in-class technology
- Cross-industry experience
- Rapid turnaround time
- Smooth and successful engagement
Most Common Q&A on Augmented Reality in Healthcare
Augmented Reality is used to simplify various clinical practices such as operating suite preparation, accurate vein visualization on the patient’s arm for drawing blood, dental learning and practice, immersive medical training, 3D medical imaging, real-time access of patient data from EMRs, precise symptom detection, collaborative surgeries, and so on.
AR-based 3D visualizations and virtual simulations allow patients to understand their health conditions better. Increased awareness of self-health encourages patients to adhere to the medical advice given by their physicians. AR can convey clinicians the symptoms or conditions which their patients wouldn’t have revealed or struggled to explain. Using an AR-enabled head-mounted device, a surgeon can review patient vitals during a medical procedure without juggling multiple devices or displays. In doing so, they are less likely to misread or misinterpret the data. To keep it short, AR brings more transparency into patient care, boosts the productivity of doctors, nurses and health workers, and ultimately improves the quality of healthcare services and delivery.
Surgeons can leverage AR to create digital models of complicated surgeries that include multiple sub-steps and critical deviations requiring careful analysis and planning. xvision Spine System, for example, is a cutting-edge AR surgical guidance system that allows surgeons to “see” the patient’s anatomy through skin and tissue just like how they view X-rays. The X-ray-like vision allows surgeons to accurately navigate instruments and implants during spine procedures.
We help you deploy AR to improve medical training, pediatric MRI evaluation, medical imaging, venipuncture procedures, dentistry, remote surgical procedures, and more! Our team at Fingent delivers augmented reality services that can improve the quality of your HCO’s service and care, cut costs, and address your business requirements in the most efficient way.
Augmented Diagnosis is a process in which AR is employed to diagnose patient symptoms, medical imaging, and health vitals through 3D modeling and visualization. It improves doctor-patient communication and helps accurate diagnosis and treatment planning.
Augmented Practice is being used by medical training institutions and colleges to simulate surgical encounters and real-life patient conditions for students. It improves positive learning outcomes through enhanced skill acquisition and retention.
Augmented Surgery allows surgeons to understand their patient’s anatomy by digitally overlaying MRI data, CT scan, and health reports on top of their patient’s body. It offers surgeons an enhanced surgical field to sketch a detailed operating plan, well ahead of the first incision.
Although AR is perceived to have great potential in many industry sectors, its utilization is yet limited. This is mostly due to the many challenges businesses often face while adopting AR. Here are a few challenges to mainstream AR adoption listed:
- >> Users are still skeptical about the right uses and benefits of AR
- >> Cost constraints limit access to AR headsets and hardware
- >> Being intensely immersive, AR is often considered physically harmful
- >> Limitations in AR content creation for businesses
- >> Lack of regulations to govern the use of AR
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Top Healthcare Digitalization Trends To Look For In The New Normal
Healthcare digitalization is reshaping the way we interact with healthcare professionals, share medical data or make decisions related to treatment and outcomes. There are plenty of examples that substantiate the digitalization of healthcare today, such as Artificial Intelligence-powered medical devices, telemedicine, blockchain, remote-patient monitoring, and electronic health records.
The main aim of healthcare innovation is to streamline the medical professionals’ work, optimize medical software systems, reduce human errors, improve patient outcomes, and lower costs through integrated web and mobile experiences.
Read more: The Application and Impact of Information Technology in Healthcare
Let’s look at the state of healthcare digitalization in 2024 and beyond:
1. On-demand Healthcare Will Grow
With the COVID-19 pandemic restricting many people to remain indoors, more and more patients seek on-demand healthcare. It is convenient as it helps patients seek guidance at their own time and from anywhere they need it.
DMN3 reveals that patients obtain online medical information primarily for the following reasons:
- 77% for booking medical appointments
- 47% for searching information about doctors and healthcare professionals
- 38% for searching information about hospitals and medical facilities
That said, on-demand healthcare is rising due to the growth of the gig economy. Here, freelance professionals from various industries hire themselves out per job or ‘gig’ instead of sticking to one company.
Read more: Patient Engagement Platforms: 7 Must-have Features
Many online healthcare marketplaces link doctors directly with short-term tasks, making it easier for physicians to deliver patient care in specific circumstances based on their expertise and schedule. Simply put, doctors are becoming on-demand healthcare providers to meet the changing needs of their patients in a better way.
2. Big Data Will Be Used To Improve Healthcare Management
Big data is the information gathered from various platforms such as eCommerce, social media, online transactions, and financial transactions. It helps identify patterns and trends for future use.
Read more: 5 Ways Big Data is Changing the Healthcare Industry
For healthcare, big data offers benefits such as:
- Reduced medication errors: Patient record analysis allows the healthcare software to flag any inconsistencies between a patient’s health and drug prescriptions. This alerts the health professionals and patients in case there is a potential risk of a medication error.
- Simplifying preventive care: Many recurring patients stepping into emergency rooms are “frequent flyers.” These frequent flyers account for up to 28% of clinical visits. Big data analysis helps identify these recurring patients and create preventive plans to keep them from returning.
- Improved staffing: Using big data’s predictive analysis, hospitals and clinics can estimate future admission rates enabling these facilities to allocate proper staff to deal with the patient. This will help save money and reduce emergency room waiting time, especially when a facility is understaffed.
Case Study: How did a data analytics solution help NHS gain financial, clinical, and geographical insights to improve visibility over their KPIs? Read Now!
Big data analytics, visualization, and insights generation can improve healthcare operations management and transform the patient experience.
3. Virtual Reality Will Transform Medical Training & Care Delivery Models
Virtual Reality is one of the most outstanding healthcare digitalization trends that change the way patients are diagnosed, and medical residents are trained.
- VR in medical diagnosis & treatments: VR is increasingly used in treatment segments in healthcare, such as patient education, robotic surgery, physical and psychological therapy, etc. For instance, medical professionals can use VR to construct a 360° patient-specific video detailing how the surgery will help the patient cure and the consequent results. Virtual Reality has been found effective in treating anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and stroke.
Case Study: Find how Fingent developed a unique mixed reality application for a leading university that enables users to identify people using facial recognition. Download Now!
- VR for medical training: Other uses of VR technology include doctors and medical residents using VR simulations to hone their skills (learning in near-real situations) and safely plan complicated surgeries. In addition, VR headsets are used post-surgery to encourage patients to exercise and follow physiotherapies. The technology also enables autistic children to learn and navigate the world.
- Growth of VR in the medical field: From startups to established pharma companies, everyone recognizes the role of VR in healthcare. Experts estimate that by 2025 the global virtual and augmented reality in healthcare will reach $5.1 billion market value. So, if you’re a healthcare company wanting to improve your digital marketing strategy, you should consider investing in VR.
Read more: How Virtual Reality Improves The Standards Of Medical Education And Training
Virtual Reality technology offers a powerful communication channel that allows you to understand customers’ needs better and virtually engage them with your products and services.
4. Wearable Medical Devices Will Enjoy A Wider Market
Another major healthcare digitalization trend is companies collecting their health data from medical devices such as wearables. Previously, most people would check in with their doctors only when something went wrong and were used to undergoing physical check-ups once a year. However, technology is changing that. Today, people highly focus on preventive maintenance and are interested in knowing about their health status frequently. This trend forces several healthcare companies to invest in wearable technology devices that allow patients or family members to track health vitals and seek medical aid when needed. Wearable medical devices enable up-to-date monitoring of high-risk patients and determine the likelihood of any severe health risk.
Experts estimate that the wearable medical device market value will cross USD 27,200 mn by 2023.
Following are some of the widely used wearable devices:
- Exercise trackers (Google Fit, Fitbit, etc.)
- Heart rate sensors (Samsung Heart Rate Sensor, Pulse Sensor, etc.)
- Sweat meters: to monitor blood sugar levels of diabetics
- Oximeters: to monitor the amount of oxygen carried in the blood
Wearable devices in healthcare offer the following benefits:
- Personalized healthcare experience: Medical devices help patients improve their health and give them a sense of ownership regarding personal healthcare management.
- Insurance pricing: Wearable devices provide insurers with insights that enable them to rate a patient’s risk for illness more accurately.
- Insurance incentives: Wearable devices allow patients to take preventive measures to improve their health. Such patients are more likely to obtain lower insurance premiums.
- Gamification opportunities: Fitness watches can help create competitive goals for users to achieve through diet, nutrition, and exercise.
Case Study: Read more about how Fingent helped create a fitness Regimen app for trainers.
5. Healthcare AI Investments Will Increase
By 2025, the healthcare AI-enabled tools market is expected to exceed $34 billion globally. This indicates that healthcare AI investments will peak soon as Artificial Intelligence is set to transform various segments in medicine.
AI-powered chatbots and virtual health assistants fulfill many roles in the healthcare industry, such as customer service representatives, diagnostic tools, or even therapists. Hence AI in healthcare is gaining immense popularity. According to a report published by MarketsandMarkets, the global healthcare chatbots market is estimated to reach $314.3 million by 2023.
Read more: 5 Leading Chatbot Use Cases Explained with Real-life Examples
That said, we can witness the real power of AI in diverse areas such as medical imaging, drug discovery, precision medicine, and genomics. For example, the first-ever drug designed by AI is showing some promise to help patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. The AI-made drug molecule, DSP-1181, is in clinical trials currently. Researchers and scientists expect that the use of AI will make drug development faster and more efficient.
Overall, AI is projected to bring USD 150 billion by 2026 in annual savings for the US healthcare economy. As start-ups are lapping up the opportunity, the number of active AI start-ups has increased 14 times since 2000.
Why Keep A Close Eye On These Healthcare Digitalization Trends
These five healthcare digitalization trends will spill over in the future as the industry will innovate and adapt to meet the patients’ demands. As a result, organizations that embrace healthcare digitalization will see dividends sooner.
Fingent top custom software development company, helps you navigate the digital healthcare space and adapt to the ‘Next Normal’ with our transformative experiences. Our custom healthcare software solutions have helped many of the leading healthcare providers worldwide. Contact us to learn more about how your healthcare organization or clinic can leverage healthcare digitalization effectively.
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Custom patient engagement platforms improve caregiver-patient interactions today. Here’s how.
With the COVID-19 pandemic restricting face-to-face engagement, patients have started using telehealth (telemedicine) technology and other digital channels to receive healthcare services. The growth of digital healthcare will increase the demand for healthcare technologies in the future. 81% of people (patients) want healthcare providers to know them individually and deliver more personalized and meaningful experiences.
While support programs like teleconsulting do not replace the physical presence of healthcare providers, they offer valued information, which is the need of the hour. With stay-at-home mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns, telemedicine is the vital care model that boosts patient engagement today. Personalized patient engagement fosters trust among patients and ensures continuity of care. So, in times of pandemic and beyond, patient engagement platforms will play a crucial role.
Read more: 5 ways to optimize the revenue of your medical practice and clinical processes
Patient engagement and its growing significance
In simple terms, patient engagement is a concept where patients are actively involved and considered important decision-makers in their care.
Engaged patients are:
- Informed- as they understand their health status and the treatment.
- Empowered- as they believe they can change their health outcomes.
- Heard- as they can communicate with their providers better and participate in shared decision-making.
What is a patient engagement platform (PEP)?
A patient engagement platform is an application that enables patients to interact with healthcare providers via their mobile device, tablet, or computer. The patient engagement platform keeps the patients involved beyond the four walls of the hospital.
When implemented effectively, patient engagement platforms can help streamline access to medical records, provide appointment reminders, enable self-scheduling for patients, and deliver patient education or awareness.
How do patient engagement platforms help?
Patient engagement platforms (PEPs) can help automate the following processes.
- Send reminders to patients regarding their postoperative treatment protocols
- Allow patients to update mobility reports and pain score
- Deliver educational content
- Manage images of wounds
- Record and monitor health vitals like BP, FBS, BMI, etc.
Read more: 7 major impacts of technology in healthcare
What are the benefits of a patient engagement platform?
1. Ease the patient engagement process
A customized patient engagement platform helps improve your patient experience by assisting them in scheduling medical appointments. It can also help notify patients about their next visit to the clinic, or when they need to check their health vitals, or when their current medication course will be over. In addition, caregivers can use the patient engagement platform to track a patient’s medical history and use the data to channelize treatment plans when the patient pays a second visit.
2. Enable caregivers to focus on core competencies
With a patient engagement platform in place, patients can fill in medical forms, electronically scan their insurance cards, and consent from their mobiles, laptops, or computers. It will allow healthcare providers to focus on their core competencies and saves patients from standing in queues or long wait times. In addition, it can expedite the care delivery process during an emergency.
Case Study: Fingent partnered with Casenet’s Advanced Solutions Group to develop TruCare Insights as a reliable population health management platform. Download Now!
3. Empower care providers to make informed decisions
Healthcare organizations can use information like satisfaction scores, online appointments, wait times, and ROI to make informed decisions related to staffing and identify opportunities for improvement. Custom patient engagement platforms allow clinicians to track all this information effectively. It goes a long way in supporting clinical decision-making.
4. Optimize healthcare throughput
Patient engagement platforms allow online registration that ensures patients have less waiting time in the clinic. It enables healthcare providers to attend to more patients in a given time and improve data accuracy and demographics. In addition, patient engagement platforms spare medical professionals from time-consuming and manual data management processes so that they get time to receive advanced medical training. Nurses, physicians, administrators, and other hospital staff members can streamline their communication, increase staff satisfaction, and utilize data analytics to make strategic decisions.
Benefits to the patients:
- Patients are aware of the next steps, such as diet plans, exercises, medication plans, or next clinical visit
- Consistent and transparent care will be available 24/7
- Augmented patient engagement and experience
- Improved communication lowers preoperative stress and anxiety
Case Study: How did a data analytics solution help NHS gain financial, clinical, and geographical insights to improve visibility over their KPIs? Read Now!
What to look for in a custom patient engagement platform?
Given the changes in patient behavior, expectations, and changing healthcare landscape, healthcare providers will have to ramp up patient engagement strategies and implement the latest engagement technologies. Patient engagement platforms must enable providers to determine the best ways to deploy their expertise and services to their patients.
Read more: Digital tools reshaping the healthcare industry
So, make sure the patient engagement platform has the following capabilities.
1. EMR integration
The patient engagement platform should integrate with Electronic Medical Records (EMR). For example, the platform should receive data from the EMR, such as a referral or recall, and revert to the EMR.
2. Sentiment analysis
The main aim of patient engagement is to understand patients on a deeper, emotional level. So, it is crucial to leverage sentiment analysis technology. This will enable providers to recognize when a patient is happy or frustrated and respond accordingly.
3. Real-time and interactive patient communication
The platform must encourage bidirectional communication, specifically text-based messaging. In short, patients must be able to communicate with their health system easily.
4. Chatbot functionality and keyword actions
The use of chatbots and keywords in patient engagement platforms is trending. It helps reduce human intervention. So, the patient engagement platform should allow for automated responses to common questions such as “where are you located?” The platform must also enable keywords to trigger automation, such as scheduling a ride for patients who need a lift.
Read more: 5 leading chatbot use cases explained with real-life examples
5. Patient on-boarding
The platform should drive patients to the patient portal and help them register quickly and conveniently to get medical support on time.
6. Integration with other vendors
A single app can’t solve it all. It is just not feasible and is also not in your patient’s best interests. Make sure that your patient engagement platform integrates seamlessly with your other vendors. For example, the platform can offer billing features or even integrate with medical billing software, medical invoice management software, etc.
7. Boost employee adoption
Your staff must like and accept the patient engagement platform. If they don’t appreciate the new technology, it won’t fulfill its potential. In addition, you must ensure that the patient engagement platform enjoys enterprise-wide adoption and has a user-friendly UX and UI.
8. Offer multilingual support
As not all patients speak English, you will have to ensure that the platform supports different languages used or spoken widely by your patients.
Read more: 5 essentials to an effective healthcare application
Why should you adopt a custom patient engagement platform?
A custom patient engagement platform is specifically developed for your organization to cover your unique healthcare requirements and cater to your internal processes.
As such a platform is built from scratch, it gives you the freedom of choice for technology. Additionally, you can easily integrate this platform with third-party systems because you get to control the code entirely. Also, you will have full ownership of the final product and customize the software according to any relevant changes in your organization.
Benefits of a custom patient engagement platform
- High scalability
- Seamless integration to your existing infrastructure
- Enables integration with any new services you are willing to include in your medical practice
- Freedom to choose the technology
- Gain full ownership of the resulting solution
Custom patient engagement platform is best suited for medical practices that:
- Offer a wide range of services
- Plan to expand in size and services
- Have rigid workflows that are difficult to adapt
- Want to integrate the new solution with the existing system
Read more: The application and impact of information technology in healthcare
Develop your custom patient engagement platform with Fingent
At Fingent, we have the expertise and work closely with you to build a custom patient engagement platform to suit your business needs. Our software development experts help you select the best web development frameworks, database and backend technologies, data visualization formats, and leading front-end technologies to develop your patient engagement platform or any medical software that you would require.
Fingent helps you develop healthcare application platforms tailored to your needs, with top features like appointment scheduling, medical billing, patient feedback management, payment processing, chatbot, and fundamental to in-depth analytics. To know more, please get in touch with us.
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Technologies that help optimize revenue and performance of your medical practice
There’s no denying that revenue is essential for any business. Sustained revenue flow keeps the employees paid, leaves the doors open, and the patrons happy. It is the same for medical practice as well. However, it can be challenging to optimize medical practice revenue and increase avenues to bring in more money. It is crucial to find strategies that the medical practice can maintain over time to ensure a steady cash inflow.
Additionally, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to influence patient behaviors, it is pushing healthcare practices across the globe to re-evaluate their business operations and look for solutions that emphasize clinical efficiencies, improve patient revenue cycle management along with enhanced reporting and analytics tools.
Apart from the challenges related to the patient intake process during the pandemic, healthcare providers also have had to meet the sudden demand for virtual care by embracing digital healthcare technologies. Advanced technology in healthcare helps automate major processes, facilitate patient engagement efforts, and improve financial stability.
Case Study
Find how Fingent’s healthcare technology solution helped improve collaboration between doctors, patients, and patient caregivers. Download Now!
In this article, we share tips to optimize the revenue of your medical practice.
1. Robust financial management
Strong finance is the foundation of every business. You must consider what money is going out in the form of overhead costs, payroll, and miscellaneous expenses. Look for ways to cut unnecessary expenditures and save your practice some money.
There are chances that you are spending on something unnecessary at your practice or experiencing a small ROI due to a huge yet incompetent investment. If a service is not bringing you a good ROI, you should remove it. To overcome these issues, ensure you have a robust revenue cycle management system in place.
Custom RCM systems help improve the administrative and clinical functions associated with claims processing payments and revenue generation. The RCM system also facilitates the financial processes of identification, management, and collection between patients and providers. RCM helps you optimize your revenue cycle at all the points of the financial process. This enables you to collect and increase revenue whenever and wherever you should.
2. Leverage healthcare information technology
While the initial cost and ongoing investment may vary based on your practice, most of the following technological investments will help you save money and increase your revenue over time.
Read more: 7 Major Impacts of Technology in Healthcare
Example 1: Telehealth
Technologies like telehealth offer safer alternatives to in-person visits. With the ongoing pandemic, this technology helps provide safe care by connecting via virtual video visits. If your practice can allot for more appointments, then telehealth allows for more visits throughout your day.
Additionally, patient portals, self-check kiosks, and QR codes help reduce the risks of exposure and increase scheduling flexibility and clinical availability. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) helps bring about organizational resilience and stabilizes patient outcomes with better and safer alternatives to in-person visits.
Example 2: Appointment Management Systems
Most medical practices lose revenue due to no-shows, missed appointments, or late cancellations. Appointment management systems ensure that patients are notified well ahead of their appointment times. This will eventually provide your practice with a better chance of fulfilling appointment times and retaining revenue. It will also improve patient trust and credibility and allow your medical staff to stay organized at work.
Example 3: Practice Management System
This system includes all your appointment scheduling, billing, patient registration, claims processing, clearinghouse integration, and more. So, investing in an intelligent practice management system can bring billing in-house and retain previously claimed revenue from outsourcing.
Read more: Digital Tools For The Future Of Healthcare Providers
3. Intuitive reporting and automation
An Electronic Health Record(EHR) system includes an array of innovative tools that can significantly impact your practice’s productivity and profitability. The EHR technology should also have tools that offer flexible functionality and interactive engagement in addition to simple record keeping so that you can focus more on patient care and waste less time on troubleshooting staff errors or reconfiguring documentation notes.
Additionally, automated workflows, comprehensive reporting features, and insightful productivity metrics help simplify your practice’s workload and streamline task management. Picklists allow you to create templates, line-item defaults and define column choices so that information is readily available and easily accessible.
Case Study
Fingent partnered with Casenet’s Advanced Solutions Group to develop TruCare Insights as a reliable population health management platform. Download Now!
4. Optimize your medical billing
To maximize your medical practice’s revenue, you must include efficient and personalized medical billing software. It allows you to optimize the bills according to the prevalent industry standards. Most practices bill patients at allowable lower levels to avoid being audited. While you may not get audited, the practice leaves behind a lot of money. So, when you provide clinical service, make sure to document it properly and bill customers appropriately. Medical billing software makes auditing easy and relieves your admins from revenue management challenges. The software also ensures that your billing and coding staff are not making mistakes, leading to significant claims denial.
If claims denials, coding errors, or any other billing issues keep your practice from optimizing the income, you may consider building customized software to handle your organization’s specific challenges. Fingent specializes in developing customized medical billing software and healthcare application platforms by working closely with your medical practice. It allows you to lower denial rates, reduce errors, and streamline your revenue cycle.
5. Security and compliance
When it comes to healthcare, efficiency matters not just at the surface level but in every single aspect of treatment, including financing, scheduling, and reporting. To ensure your EHR can keep up with the regular system, it should include an educational database that allows providers to quickly train their staff and give the patient access to explanatory articles and videos. Keeping these resources available will help bring about positive outcomes and hassle-free software maintenance. Fingent offers custom software development, testing, implementation, maintenance, and support services for healthcare service providers. We’ve partnered with organizations like NHS to help them improve clinical process management using technology.
Case Study
How did a data analytics solution help NHS gain financial, clinical, and geographical insights plus improve visibility over KPIs? Download Now!
While compliance laws ensure patient health information (PHI) and overall safety of practice operations, you must make cybersecurity a top priority. This is especially true now with the shift to working remotely. Employees are more prone to hacker’s attempts to cease connectivity and steal confidential data. To overcome this, you must use virtual private networks (VPN) and reliable firewall software to safeguard vital business information. Our network security and IT infrastructure management services ensure that your business-critical assets are protected from cyber threats, and your proprietary information is protected 24/7.
Read more: The Application and Impact of Information Technology in Healthcare
Advanced technology in healthcare has helped providers choose and select a system that benefits their business. For example, medical billing software, revenue cycle management, appointment management, and patient engagement systems are a few solutions that providers should consider when employing an EHR solution. Healthcare technology improves patient resolutions, avoids preventable errors, and expands clinical availability.
Practice is a step ahead of theory. Our healthcare IT system developers follow this rule of thumb. Connect with our team to learn more about the technologies you can adopt to gain business benefits and significant cost savings.
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Information Technology in Healthcare: Applications and Role
The Growing Significance of Health Information Technology
From anesthetics and antibiotics to MRI scanners and radiotherapy, health information technology (HIT) is transforming patient care in unprecedented ways. Customized healthcare applications, medical practice management software, remote patient monitoring technology, and other health information systems in hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities allow healthcare providers to stay relevant and competent amidst the waves of change.
“Information is the lifeblood of medicine and health information technology is destined to be the circulatory system for that information.”
– David Blumenthal
With a fair understanding of the key applications and role of information technology in healthcare, physicians, hospital networks, medical practitioners, and caregivers can successfully leverage health IT to reduce costs and improve the overall quality and effectiveness of patient care and experience.
What is Information Technology in Healthcare?
Health Information Technology (HIT or HCIT) is a key segment of healthcare as well as IT that involves the design, development, implementation, usage, and maintenance of information systems and software solutions for the healthcare industry.
Information technology in healthcare encompasses a wide range of functions, including and not limited to:
- Health information management across computing devices and platforms for hospitals, clinics, healthcare providers, and other medical centers
- Secure exchange of health information between consumers, providers, payers, insurers, and quality monitors
- Hardware and software solutions used to store, retrieve, share, and analyze healthcare information, medical data, and knowledge for seamless communication and decision-making
- Healthcare software used to manage daily clinical operations and administrative tasks, improve efficiency, and reduce costs and errors
- Remote/ virtual health monitoring and consulting solutions, medical mobile apps, online medical records, wearables, and self-management tools to facilitate personalized care
Current State of Global Healthcare Information Technology Market
- Market size as of 2022: $394.6 billion
- Estimated value by 2027: $974.5 billion
- Projected Compound Annual Growth Rate: 19.8%
- Key market drivers: e-prescribing, telehealth, mHealth, and other HCIT solutions
Are you looking for custom software solutions tailored to healthcare needs?
Types of Health Information Technology
Health information technology collectively refers to the different types of software systems used by healthcare professionals, care providers, and sometimes patients, to store, share, and analyze health information. There are different types of Health IT systems.
#1Electronic Health Records (EHR)
EHRs or electronic medical record (EMR) systems are used to document and store a patient’s medical information, such as their health reports, diagnosis results, allergies, laboratory charges, treatment history, and so on.
Benefits of using EHR/ EMR systems:
- Medical practitioners can quickly access a patient’s EMR using a mobile or computer
- Physicians can easily share data across different departments to provide quick and accurate treatment
- Digital creation and management of health records eliminate tedious paperwork and reduce the errors caused by manual documentation
- Easy to avoid medical errors since the same kind of health information is shared across all departments
#2Medical Practice Management Systems
Medical practice management software is used to manage the different administrative and clinical aspects of your practice such as handling the documents pertaining to your facility, scheduling appointments, billing and payments, report generation, insurance eligibility verification, and other day-to-day tasks.
Benefits of medical practice management software:
- Automate routine clerical tasks such as scheduling appointments, billing & payment processing, claims administration, and other related procedures for managing your facility
- Streamline the workflow for doctors and clinical staff, so that they can spend more time with their patients and less time on administrative tasks
- Automate the process of stocking and distributing medical inventory and tracking the products dispensed to patients
- Generate detailed clinical performance reports to analyze the financial health of your medical practice and take the next steps to improve your cash flow
#3E-prescribing Software
Doctors can use the e-prescribing software to generate and share prescriptions with their patients online or send the prescriptions directly to the pharmacy in just a few clicks. This saves the time and effort for both the patient as well as the pharmacist.
Benefits of e-prescribing software:
- Eliminates the need to create handwritten notes by generating legible prescriptions online
- Avoids mix-up, loss, or misplacement of prescriptions and ensures the pharmacist supplies the right medicines to the patient
- Makes it easier to track a patient's medication history with the help of a pharmacy’s database
#4Remote Patient Monitoring Tools
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a kind of homecare telehealth that allows patients or their bystanders to use wearables or mobile medical devices to gather patient-generated health data and send it to healthcare professionals for virtual monitoring and diagnosis.
Examples of remote patient monitoring technology:
- Glucometers for patients with diabetes
- IoT-based surveillance monitors to locate patients with critical conditions like dementia and alert healthcare professionals in case of an event like a fall
- Blood pressure monitors and heart rate monitors
- Post-operative cardiac monitoring devices for homecare
- Smart watches and wrist brands to track daily exercise routines and caloric intake
#5Medical Billing Software
Medical billing software consists of tools that simplify billing-related workflows for healthcare facilities. It helps handle invoicing tasks, patient billing, insurance coverage verification and claims processing, patient demographics, creation of financial reports, and more.
Benefits of medical billing software:
- Facilitates proper information storage, reduces time-consuming paperwork, and increases convenience for the clinic staff and patients
- Streamlines clinical and administrative processes, improves staff productivity, and provides faster turnaround times for claims processing
- Improves overall clinical process efficiency by automating the steps involved in billing & invoicing, payment reminders, information management, claims, and reimbursements
Benefits of IT in the Healthcare Industry
The ultimate goal of information technology in healthcare is to enhance the overall health of the population by improving the quality of care that patients receive. Applying information technology in healthcare offers a lot of benefits.
- Provides healthcare professionals with accurate, actionable, and accessible information related to their patients’ health
- Facilitates enhanced communication and shared decision-making between patients and healthcare providers
- Accurate maintenance and update of medical data and patient history across multiple platforms will reduce costly medical errors
- Up-to-date health information management ensures that every patient gets access to personalized care and treatment
- Enables faster and more informed decisions concerning health-related risks
- Healthcare applications provide easier access to explicit care guidelines and physician-recommended treatments
- Allows nursing professionals to focus more on the care they provide thereby reducing the chances for medical negligence
- Expands the collaboration between medical professionals by minimizing errors and miscommunication
- Better medication management and easier access for patients to their medical records
- Helps build social support networks for both patients as well as healthcare professionals
- Improves awareness among patients as well as the general public about health-related matters that can lead to positive outcomes
Web Application for Health Insurance Decision Makers: A Case Study
In a world of complex and ever-changing healthcare dynamics, health insurance decision-makers often find themselves caught in a web of challenges. Casenet, a leading provider of population health technology solutions in the US sought a dependable ally- a tool that would empower them to sustain their business, optimize day-to-day operations, and unearth untapped user segments.
Fingent emerged as the transformative force, turning their struggles into resounding triumphs with the advent of TruCare Insights. This cutting-edge web application became the catalyst for empowering decision-makers with real-time insights and robust analytics. Seamlessly integrating with their existing systems, TruCare Insights revolutionized the management and exploration of data. It unveiled a suite of action-oriented dashboards and management tools, allowing leaders to monitor operations and streamline team workflows. The result was a powerful transformation.
- Real-time insights and analytics empowered decision-makers to make well-informed choices.
- Enhanced focus on the specific requirements of healthcare payer organizations.
- A user-friendly interface enabled seamless data exploration and analysis.
- Substantial increase in new sales was achieved.
Know about the latest tech developments advancing in the healthcare industry.
Uses of Information Technology in Healthcare
Information technology is being used in numerous ways to improve patient safety, healthcare delivery, and communication between healthcare providers and patients.
Patient Records and Data Management
Digital management of patient data prevents important health information from getting lost, damaged, or misinterpreted. Health information technology applications enable healthcare professionals to manage patient data securely in a centralized location. A medical professional can add pharmacy records, X-rays, test results, and even vital signage to the virtual patient charts that are easy to read, share, analyze, and preserve for future reference.
Nursing Informatics
Nursing informatics is a fast-growing field in healthcare that combines patient care with data and technology to improve the quality of care, patient experience, and outcomes. In simple terms, nursing informatics specialists work with EHR systems and patient data management solutions to collect, analyze, optimize, and maintain patient data and build important reports for clinicians to make data-driven decisions.
Medical Data Collection and Research
Using health information technology applications such as EHRs, patient/ disease registries, discharge summaries, health surveys, and hospital databases, medical researchers can collect relevant data that will help them produce new medicines and design new types of treatments and conduct clinical trials. However, researchers gathering personal health information should obtain the required permission from data owners, adhere to data compliance regulations, and anonymize data samples before putting them into actual use.
Prevention and Control of Pandemic Epidemics
Digital health technologies play an important role in curbing the spread and impact of global pandemics like COVID-19. Health information technology aids in understanding the nature of diseases, improving diagnostic tools, and controlling the spread of infection on a larger scale. Telehealth systems, contact tracing apps, remote health monitoring tools, medical analytics, and online health surveys help control the spread of the infection, monitor outbreaks and their extent, and keep medical professionals and patients safe while providing continued care.
Monitor Patient Compliance
Remote patient monitoring tools, such as medical mobile apps, wearables, fitness apps, and custom healthcare applications for tracking conditions such as diabetes and oncology allow physicians to keep tabs on bed-ridden or homebound patients who need to be checked on more frequently. Instant feedback and suggestions from doctors enable the monitoring of patient compliance in real-time, especially by community pharmacists or home nurses who can make timely interventions to keep the patient safe and healthy.
Role of information technology in healthcare:
- Patient data management
- Health information exchange
- Reduce medical errors
- Protect patient privacy
- Enhance clinical decision-making
- Validate and process insurance claims
- Improve patient care and experience
- Ensure accuracy in test reports and diagnosis
- Prevent adverse drug reactions
Top Health Information Technology Trends
#1Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
- Devices and networks that enable telemedicine and virtual care
- Remote patient monitoring devices to observe patients with chronic conditions in their homes
- Wearable or on-body IoMT devices that are connected to a person's body and record medical information about them, such as heart rate or blood pressure
- Glucose monitoring and calorie intake tracking mobile apps on patients’ smartphones
#2Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality solutions allow both healthcare professionals and patients to interact with highly-personalized simulated environments.
- 3D models and simulated virtual environments for anatomy learning and improving medical social skills
- Simulation of medical procedures, emergency cases, and medical equipment training
- Practice and train surgeons by conducting mock-surgeries in a virtual operating room
- Immersive VR simulations and gamified experiences for patients to alleviate chronic pains as well as mental stress and anxiety
- Inspiring and engaging VR-powered sessions to aid physical therapies and exercises as well as cognitive and neuro rehabilitation
#3Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality services are becoming more accessible and affordable in healthcare due to their versatility. They can be used for medical imaging, medical education, dentistry, and nurses’ training, providing an engaging and immersive learning experience.
- AR-enabled virtualized training provides medical practitioners with deeper insights into the nuances of body functions
- AR-based data visualization tools enable medical R&D teams to expedite the study of genetic data related to specific microbes
- AR helps create digital models of complicated surgeries including multiple sub-steps and critical deviations requiring careful analysis and planning
- 3D medical imaging, real-time access of patient data from EMRs, precise symptom detection, and collaborative surgeries
- Operating suite preparation, accurate vein visualization on the patient’s arm, dental learning and practice, and immersive medical training
#4Artificial Intelligence
AI software development is transforming healthcare by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve diagnosis accuracy, predict outcomes, and reduce medical errors. AI can enhance personalized medicine and drug discovery, providing new opportunities for improving patient outcomes.
- AI in medical diagnostics helps unlock massive amounts of clinical data to boost medical diagnosis
- Allows doctors and caregivers to detect potentially life-threatening ailments at more treatable stages
- Reduces diagnostic errors and suggests the best practices for post-surgical care, patient discharge, medications, and follow-up checks
- Helps streamline drug research and discovery, and reduces the time-to-market for new drugs
- AI algorithms run behind self-health monitoring devices such as wearables, activity trackers, pedometers, smartwatches, and other physical fitness monitoring gadgets to derive in-depth insights on patient health
#5Cloud Adoption in Healthcare
Healthcare-compliant cloud platforms offer a robust and flexible foundation for rapid development and testing of new software platforms.
- Unified view of patient profile and records by pulling together data from different hospital systems
- Facilitates collaborative decision-making by integrating data across the care continuum
- Fosters remote collaboration between healthcare providers, care systems, staff, and patients
- Healthcare leaders can unlock the value of data generated along the patient journey, from the hospital to the home
- Flexibility for healthcare providers to scale up or down as demands evolve, without being locked into fixed capital expenses or investing in new systems
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Key Considerations for Implementing Information Technology in Healthcare
Crucial steps for the successful implementation of health information technology:
- Identify existing problems as well as areas for improvement in your healthcare practice or organization.
- Find out if the health information technology you’re considering is capable of tackling the problem.
- Involve and get the buy-in of different professional stakeholder groups, such as doctors, nurses, clinical and administrative staff, managers, senior management, and other strategic leaders in your organization.
- Commit adequate time and resources to define your business case, evaluate various HIT providers, contact their references, and review the healthcare technology solutions they’ve built in the past.
- Decide whether you need an off-the-shelf standardized solution or a home-grown customized healthcare software. While commercial systems may appear cheaper to purchase, they are not customized to individual organizations, which will increase your future overheads.
- It’s always advisable to build a customized healthcare system for your organization that will fulfill a range of requirements on a variety of levels. Tailor-made healthcare software systems ensure a careful balance between affordability and desired functionality.
- Decide how to prioritize the implementation of functionality that can bring benefits to the maximum number of end-users at the earliest stage itself.
- Focus on developing the right infrastructure for your healthcare technology application in order to ensure improved usability and performance.
- Implement software training programs tailored to individual roles of users, so they get adapted to the new system quickly.
- Continuously evaluate the progress of technology adoption, capture user feedback about problems that are identified, and respond to it in a timely manner.
- Maintain your healthcare software with regular system re-visits, scheduled software maintenance, patches and updates, and system upgrades to ensure optimal performance round-the-clock.
How Can Fingent Help?
Fingent is a top custom software development company offering healthcare information technology consulting, application development, implementation, maintenance, and support services for different players and industry segments in the healthcare ecosystem.
We help identify your medical practice’s specific needs and come up with the best custom software solutions for improving patient care delivery and enhancing the productivity and performance of healthcare professionals. We also develop technology solutions for healthcare payer organizations and insurance carriers that help them make better decisions and improve their visibility in today’s competitive market.
Our healthcare technology consulting team aims to deliver value through personalized healthcare application platforms and customized health information technology solutions designed to fulfill your business objectives. Contact us to understand how your business can benefit from our healthcare IT consulting services.
Frequently Asked Questions About Health Information Technology
Electronic Health Records are digital records of patient health information that can be used by physicians for clinical decision-making. EHRs can be shared with other medical departments, care providers, or labs as they are updated with real-time patient data.
Personal health records also contain the same type of information as EHRs like diagnoses, test reports, patient charts, and medical history. However, PHRs are designed to be configured, accessed, and managed by patients to maintain their personal healthcare information in a private, secure, and confidential environment.
Electronic prescribing tools are used by medical practitioners to create and share prescriptions with their patients online or send the prescriptions directly to the pharmacy in just a few clicks. This saves the time and effort for both the patient as well as the pharmacist and eliminates the risks like loss or misplacement of prescriptions.
A patient portal is an online healthcare application that allows patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers, such as physicians and hospitals. Patient portals provide patients with convenient, 24-hour access to their personal health information from anywhere with an internet-connected device like a laptop, smartphone, tablet, PC or a connected gadget.
Electronic Health Information Exchange (EHIE) refers to the mobilization of healthcare data digitally across different healthcare information systems used by care-giving organizations, communities, and hospital networks. HIE facilitates continuity of care with multiple providers by moving real-time patient information across the systems involved in the exchange process.
Telehealth or telemedicine involves the delivery of remote clinical services over the telecommunications infrastructure. Examples of telehealth include virtual diagnosis and monitoring, connecting with the healthcare provider through video call or live chat, online therapy and counseling, patient-doctor communication through patient portals, mobile health devices, and wearables.
Custom healthcare software development simplifies and improves day-to-day healthcare management for care providers, hospitals, medical professionals, vendors, patients, and all other players in the healthcare ecosystem. Developing software tailored to your healthcare organization’s needs will help you:
- >> gain end-to-end visibility over your routine clinical activities,
- >> integrate disparate applications used for different purposes,
- >> generate custom reports,
- >> get up-to-date medical data across all your devices and applications,
- >> reduce total cost of ownership,
- >> ensure health information safety,
- >> track medical history of patients,
- >> optimize revenue, and gain financial stability.
Healthcare information technology allows you to create electronic health records that provide in-depth, real-time data for physicians to make critical decisions concerning their patients’ safety. Healthcare technology applications produce a lot of data every second, which is highly insightful in patient care management.
Analytics can improve medication safety and ensure better treatment reconciliation. Custom software has created a higher degree of transparency in the healthcare ecosystem. By utilizing the valuable health data, it is now possible to combat diseases and offer better healthcare outcomes in general.
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Technology impact on healthcare
How Emerging Technology is Transforming the Healthcare Industry?
Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds and brought about changes in every industry. The Healthcare industry is no exception. Thanks to the advanced technology in healthcare, today, patients have access to some of the best and cutting-edge treatments. Also, patients can have access to innumerable minimally-invasive procedures that are less painful and result in better recovery.
With the world reeling under the COVID-19 pandemic, most countries are following lockdowns and social distancing to curb the spread. However, with the help of technology, remote consultations with experts, and the availability of intuitive mobile apps have helped patients (non-COVID) to receive improved patient care and quality healthcare experiences.
Are you looking for custom software solutions tailored to healthcare needs?
The following are seven of the top impacts of technology in healthcare that are revolutionizing the field:
1
Improved Communication
Emerging technology in healthcare has facilitated improved communication within healthcare organizations. More and more medical professionals are leveraging technology such as video, AR/VR, real-time meeting capacities, and other online platforms to communicate and help spread knowledge in the field. Also, teleconferencing has made communication beyond geographic borders a breeze.
2
Electronic Medical Records
Gone are the days of bulky files and worn-out papers, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) or electronic medical records help save summaries of a patient’s medical records digitally. The digital summary can include lab reports, diagnoses, surgical interventions, prescriptions, and even details of hospital stays. Electronic medical records offer better insights into a patient’s health leading to accurate diagnosis and better patient care.
Digital records facilitate the sharing of information between specialists and labs thereby improving coordination. If properly maintained and implemented, digital records can also help increase accountability and reduce medical negligence. Simply put, EHRs consume less time to create and are easier to maintain. They help medical professionals reduce the chances of making mistakes and make their life easier.
3
Big Data
For the uninitiated, big data refers to a large amount of data that is fast or complex and difficult to process using traditional methods.
Health technology allows medical accountants to gather big data in a short time. Data collection helps healthcare professionals to understand and learn cutting-edge techniques and trends. This data can be used for analytics and make predictions about possible epidemics and identify risk factors. Also, access to big data allows clinicians to recommend appropriate preventive steps more effectively and reduce deaths.
In addition to the collection of data, cloud storage of data ensures improved efficiency and accessibility with less wastage. This helps in research and development of new medical treatments and lifesaving formulations. Cloud storage is a secure and cost-effective solution with back-up and recovery features that are managed and maintained without additional server hardware. It is an invaluable advantage for medical research and analysis that helps in efficient health information exchange.
4
Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Today, approximately 95% of Americans have a mobile phone and most of them use it to access information of some kind from the internet. Health technology also has reformed its processes to connect with people efficiently.
ICT has linked not just medical professionals but also with the patients. From emails, telemedicine to smartphones and telemonitoring systems, all are used to share information. This is particularly useful for rural areas facing a dearth of facilities and/or specialists. From diagnostic to management, ICT is improving constantly and streamlining how the healthcare industry functions and how patients are communicating with the care providers.
The new technology in healthcare allows care providers to compare health data of patients, identify risk factors, and recommend preventive measures. This has also given a boost to medical tourism helping many patients to seek consultations and second opinions from specialists practically from any part of the world. Patients can even virtually travel to another country to avail of specialized treatment or advanced surgery following remote communication such as video conferencing.
5
Improved Patient Care
Technology in healthcare has provided the healthcare community with advanced tools to improve patient care. Using EHRs, physicians can easily access the complete medical histories of a patient and make an informed decision. Physicians can even use apps to identify possible medication errors and help a patient’s safety.
Virtual Reality (VR) devices and apps help ease symptoms of anxiety and depression in older people and those suffering from mental illness. Augmented Reality (AR) also helps surgeons to perform complex surgeries. Both virtual reality as well as augmented reality devices can help improve health and fitness among patients. Some examples like robotic knee replacement and gene therapy in cancer treatment prove that technology in healthcare will only grow exponentially in near future.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has improved patient care by providing information about a patient’s crucial signs and temperature. RFID facilitates real-time tracking of location, identification, and communication.
In addition to VR, AR, and RFID, 3D printing is used to create prosthetics, hearing aids, and even customized dental devices.
6
Health Apps
Information Technology in Healthcare has resulted in the development of several health apps. This enables patients to have access to quick and accurate medical information using their smartphones. Patients can use these apps to keep track of medical appointments, receive reminders, and even access to test results easily. Health apps help people get healthier by offering customized solutions and track their food intake and activity levels.
Physicians can use these apps to access drug information to prevent side effects, solve any issues, and improve diagnosis. Physicians can communicate with their patients directly, record their vital signs, maintain logs about consultation and visits, and achieve better procedural efficiency.
7
Telemedicine
Telemedicine allows patients to consult with a specialist anywhere in the world. This new technology in healthcare facilitates critical care in emergencies, potentially saving lives. Telemedicine helps patients to use telemedical devices to receive home care and support via apps and video calls. Telemedicine makes it possible to transmit biosignal, medical images, and other crucial information to a specialist through asynchronous consultation. It means, neither the doctor nor the patient has to be present or online at the same time. This can significantly reduce the waiting time for patients and help improve delivery processes.
Healthcare professionals can monitor patients remotely via telemedicine. This can help manage chronic conditions effectively. Real-time interactions such as video conferencing can help with diagnosis, management, counseling, and patient monitoring.
Know about the latest tech developments advancing in the healthcare industry.
Odoo ERP Integration: A Case Study
In a world of complex and ever-changing healthcare dynamics, health insurance decision-makers often find themselves caught in a web of challenges. Casenet, a leading provider of population health technology solutions in the US sought a dependable ally- a tool that would empower them to sustain their business, optimize day-to-day operations, and unearth untapped user segments.
Fingent worked with Kogland to integrate Odoo ERP software into their existing system to overcome challenges like manual processes, financial disorder, and inefficient customer data tracking. With Odoo ERP, Kogland could automate many of its procurement processes, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the chances of errors. The integration also helped Kogland track its inventory levels in real time, which meant it could make more informed decisions about its procurement processes. The results were nothing short of amazing!
- Streamlined their sales management and accounting processes
- Deliver personalized services to customers
- Improved the efficiency of its operations through multifold
- Better decision-making through access to real-time data
Conclusion
To sum up, it can be said that technology has revolutionized healthcare and is expected to continue in the years to come. While developed nations have been able to harness health technology more efficiently, developing nations are not lagging. Today, more and more health providers are realizing the untapped potential of technology and leveraging it to streamline processes. There’s no denying that healthcare and technology go hand in hand and professionals will have to make the required changes and investments to improve the quality of healthcare.
Fingent, software development company, working with healthcare providers, medical analysts, life sciences experts, medical equipment suppliers, device manufacturers, and a host of players in the healthcare ecosystem to enhance their experience w.r.t. managing patient relations, delivering superior care, streamline treatment procedures and benefit from the rapidly growing medical data.
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How e-commerce adoption benefits B2B healthcare providers and device makers
The healthcare and life sciences industry is expanding at an exponential rate. The complexity and regulatory nature of the industry have made it imperative that technology catches up with its pace and offers solutions to meet this expansion. This need is being felt more acutely at the moment with the COVID-19 pandemic on the loose. As the pandemic spreads its poison and puts the B2B healthcare and life sciences e-commerce market into a state of flux, it forces large and small organizations to cope with a range of problems that include difficult purchase decisions, supply chain disruptions, and fulfillment and delivery issues. This calls for a technological solution tailored to suit the B2B healthcare and life sciences industry.
With over 17 years of experience in delivering customized technological solutions including developing e-commerce platforms for B2B clients, we provide B2B e-commerce web application development services for manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and so on. Also, our mobile app development services specialize in the designing and development of custom B2B e-commerce apps.
Case Study: Fingent’s solution for our client Bonanza – Streamlining Online Listing and Inventory Management
In this article, we will explore five specific ways in which B2B e-commerce is that solution and how it will transform healthcare and life sciences.
Immediate and lasting impact on the B2B e-commerce market
In the present scenario, especially from a healthcare and life sciences manufacturing and supply perspective, the impact is immediate throughout the entire supply chain. Manufacturing companies are unable to keep up with the demand, and distributors are rushing to create workflows in an attempt to mitigate customer complaints. Distributors are being forced to claw their way to the front of the line to obtain supplies from manufacturers, stock up on products, and take care of their customers.
Healthcare and life sciences organizations typically have disaster preparedness plans, but dealing with such an unprecedented disaster is another ball game altogether. The question has shifted from purchasing to inventory, from buying to stocking. It makes it challenging to find the space to hold extra products that these industries may need and that causes anxiety to all parties within the supply chain.
B2B e-commerce offers irresistible opportunities for purchasers and medical suppliers
B2B e-commerce works largely on a distribution-based model where customers get their supplies from local distributors or dealers. Thus far, e-commerce has been disrupting the offline system of the B2B industry at a slow pace. However, with the spread of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown, various industries including healthcare and life sciences are switching to online buying options to prevent human contact. This has resulted in B2B e-commerce experiencing an unprecedented boost in traffic and sales in just a matter of a few weeks.
Read More: Contactless Retail Delivery Software – How Retailers Can Revive Sales While Adhering To Social Distancing Norms
While buyers turn to an online purchase, many suppliers have adapted their strategy to foster online sales, dedicating a certain amount of their budget to digital marketing and communications. The current pandemic is imposing digitization of all B2B businesses that would help to communicate with the buyers and generate sales. Digitization of the supply chain is a crucial aspect of e-commerce because it encourages transparency and shows real-time availability of goods right from the manufacturers to the buyers. This makes it extremely important for suppliers to implement digitization in their supply chain.
The present COVID situation has forced most suppliers to work from home. Those who have already been using digital media are able to manage work remotely. However, others need to think over and plan to reform their business model to adapt to the new era of e-commerce. The pandemic might be temporary, but this trend is not going to be! This is a breakthrough that will continue far into the future. Now is the best time to be innovative, leverage the benefits of the latest digital technology, data analytics, and AI and unlock the potential of digitalization and e-commerce in B2B business. An advanced e-commerce solution built on the latest technology facilitates seamless interactions online across marketing, product discovery, sales, and post-sale service in the B2B sellers’ space.
Read More: E-commerce ERP Software
Five ways B2B e-commerce can be transformative
As B2B e-commerce forges ahead, the healthcare and life sciences industries will prove to be faster adopters than others. They can fully leverage real-time data tracking inventory and logistics between buyers and sellers. For manufacturers and distributors who sell to hospitals and nursing homes, the level of information presented to buyers in the B2B space can depend on the size of the organization or the customer that is doing the transaction. Depending on the frequency of the order, the level of sophistication of information may vary. Shifting to B2B e-commerce will prove to be a much-needed transformation.
Here are five ways that this transformation will be seen:
1. Online Shopping Drives Online Presence
E-commerce is changing the way people and end-users (such as doctors) shop for healthcare products and the way those products reach the hands of customers. Instead of visiting a pharmacy, most customers are turning to the internet to perform the functions of a regular pharmacy. Healthcare and life sciences companies use a business model that features quick delivery to a patient’s door or to hospitals and healthcare centers. Investors see promise in this revolutionary approach to medication fulfillment, demonstrating that the market has confidence in this model despite the shifting healthcare and life sciences landscape.
With more and more people turning to the internet to access products and medical care, the healthcare and life sciences industries have been increasingly concerned with the quality of their online presence. According to an online medical marketplace, 50% of their customers are referred by their primary provider or by hospital staff, and 20% are referred by family or friends. This highlights the need for the healthcare and life sciences industries to increase their online presence and maintain it.
2. Helps explore new possibilities while cutting costs and time
Shifting to an online B2B e-commerce process can help businesses recover 25-30 percent of their investment. Some of the more mature players might even see higher returns of their business through online orders.
Migrating more orders online frees up time for sales reps. They can concentrate on introducing new products and capitalize on opportunities for new business. This allows industry leaders to use their time and ability to explore new channels of business and revenue streams. This can also help expand their client base and move into new markets.
B2B e-commerce enables the healthcare and life sciences companies to see where the business is coming from, where the segments are online and where they are offline. It also gives them the ability to offer variable discounts with certain customers, on certain products, or even just one customer. It will make drug prices more transparent and market-oriented.
Read more: Odoo E-commerce – 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP
3. Transforms Logistics Operations
Synchronization of logistic operations is critical for the success of any business. Enterprise customers generally look for reliability, speed, traceability, and convenience in delivery along with effective product returns, and exchange policy of damaged products.
Technology solutions for B2B e-commerce provide orchestration with an application that is to be hosted on an e-commerce website. The open standard in these applications facilitates information exchange that allows real-time visibility for seamless integration across supply chain stakeholders. E-commerce offerings can provide credibility and trust for transactions between companies involved in the supply chain.
4. Enables Customer Personalization
B2B e-commerce enables customer personalization. Enterprise customers want personalized solutions. B2B e-commerce provides a customer portal with content organized around the parameters of their past purchase history and price optimization algorithms that are adjusted on the basis of the relationship. E-commerce offerings are simple, flexible, and convenient. B2B players can use a comprehensive suite of tools that are available to help their customers navigate the site. Certain platforms incorporate live online support to assist with any queries or issues which can improve conversion levels and facilitate buying decisions.
5. Sheer Momentum
Many medical device companies are already selling products online to enterprise customers. The healthcare and life sciences market is ripe for disruption. Medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies will continue to deliver to wholesalers and distributors, but e-commerce allows them to embark on direct-to-patient delivery. Logistics is ready to respond with tailored services for various products. B2B e-commerce is set to propel healthcare and life sciences forward in the extremely near future.
Take Action
Ultimately, healthcare and life sciences e-commerce will facilitate the redistribution of stakeholders’ offline enterprise transformation and reconstruct all the links of the value chain. Realizing the benefits of B2B e-commerce, many healthcare and life sciences companies are becoming believers.
Read more: Top 5 Open-source ERP Systems for Medical Equipment Suppliers
E-commerce can effectively optimize operating processes, reduce costs, manage resource allocations, and address the increasingly diversified consumer healthcare demands. The healthcare and life sciences companies must understand that due to the conditions of accelerated technology change, it has become critical for enterprises to become more skilled in deciding their future course and be firm in taking action. If you need help with this, we are software development experts and are here to help you take that next step. Get in touch with us and just let us know what you need.
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A list of 5 popular open-source ERPs that support healthcare equipment suppliers
The global healthcare expenditure is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 5% till 2023. The healthcare industry can, therefore, look at a bright future. Medical equipment suppliers have to deal with various challenges. They have to ensure that all products comply with the regulatory guidelines, are of high quality, and are entirely traceable. Robust ERP systems can help medical equipment suppliers to gather insights from data to make quick decisions. Let’s take a look at some of the open-source ERP systems out there that are suitable for SMEs.
1. Odoo ERP
Odoo is an open-source ERP platform that allows ease of deployment. This is specifically helpful for SMEs that do not have dedicated IT infrastructure. The flexibility helps integration of different business processes and systems. Odoo for medical equipment suppliers is a comprehensive ERP solution that helps manage financials and operations with ease.
The core modules of Odoo like Accounting, Project Management, and Inventory Management make it suitable for medical equipment suppliers. Developers can create custom third-party apps to meet the specific needs of a medical equipment supplier. Odoo offers more than 10,000 apps to meet most business needs. Fingent is an official partner of Odoo with years of experience in implementing, customizing, and providing consultation for clients. As an Odoo development company, Fingent has catered to the needs of various customers and streamlined their operations. Our motto of increasing efficiency and ease-of-use has made us a popular choice among various organizations for Odoo implementation requirements.
Read more: 5 Salient Features of Odoo that Make it a Reliable ERP for Enterprises
2. ERPNext
ERPNext is a contemporary ERP solution that allows you to focus on delivering medical equipment of high-quality by effortlessly managing your supply chains. It enables you to intelligently track orders, monitor stock levels, implement promotions, and minimize errors in inventory sourcing. You can leverage the numerous built-in integrations offered by ERPNext and start supplying in no time. With ERPNext, you can have real-time updates on the movement of equipment, control equipment transfers within different warehouses, and generate required reports quickly and easily. You can also create your customized software on-the-fly without any code.
3. Epicor
Medical equipment suppliers have to deal with difficult delivery timelines, complicated pricing arrangements, unique inventory, oversee seller agreements, and concessions. Epicor ERP solution enables you to carry out all your operations with ease. The Epicor Prophet 21 ERP is specifically designed for supply and distribution. This user-friendly ERP system can help suppliers maximize profits and scale without limits. Epicor allows you to integrate all your business applications with RESTful API. You can also automatically manage your warehouses with Epicor Prophet 21. This helps in the smooth running of all processes in your warehouse. This, in turn, improves precision enabling you to provide better services to your customers.
Epicor Commerce Connect helps you to create and maintain an online presence which is the need of the hour. The increased visibility across the supply chain helps medical equipment suppliers even forecast demand.
Read more: ERP or Digital Transformation: The Best Technology Solution For Your Enterprise
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 combines the best practices of Microsoft’s ERP, CRM, and BI solutions into a single product that is cloud-based. These features enable the system to scale and grow along with your business. Capabilities like Material Resource Planning and Vendor Self-Service Help minimize vendor lead times and inventory carrying costs. The fully automated warehouse management system (WMS) helps optimize your warehouse space, labor, and resources.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives medical device suppliers full visibility across the entire supply chain and the ability to track information and job at all touchpoints. This helps improve efficiency, reduce expenses, and promote smooth communication within different segments of the medical device industry supply chain. As a medical device supplier, you need to understand who has purchased the device from you and whether it has come back for service. You have to take information from different systems and combine those to give meaningful reporting. You also may have to rework your inventory according to changes in regulations. Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows you to be unique in the medical device industry because that’s what gives you the edge.
Read more: ERP E-commerce
5. Oracle NetSuite
Oracle Netsuite is proven to be a very mature SaaS solution that brings in next-level integration and seamless nature to the table. Though NetSuite is ideal for SMEs who can leverage the relatively low-cost entry point, many enterprise-level companies are also considering Netsuite due to the scalability that it provides. Oracle NetSuite helps medical device suppliers to react to the diverse market and deal with different customer bases and different routes-to-market. NetSuite helps you reduce indirect costs and get through the maze of the regulatory framework by allowing modifications and customizations. You get one central source of information that helps simplify the complexities of the medical device business. The flexibility that Oracle NetSuite offers, helps the medical equipment industry to adapt to the changes in customer demand and provide them with what they want and when they want.
Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP
Conclusion
Analyses of the medical equipment supplies and distribution industry show that companies that have demonstrated the ability to leverage cloud computing and ERP have increased their profitability and revenue. This was achieved as a result of seamless integration of all business processes which enabled real-time financial and operational visibility, better cost management structures, improved forecasting and revenue tracking, and the ability to access data from anywhere.
A large number of medical equipment suppliers usually are small to medium-sized businesses, where the one-off system automation model proves to be inefficient. Cloud-based ERP systems eliminates the old standalone computer systems and replaces them with a single, unified software program. Thus, someone in Finance can easily look into the Warehouse software to check if an order is shipped. ERP cloud computing can help you see exactly where your business is, at any second of the day. You can see how much revenue you’ve earned for the day, how much inventory you have, how you are trending over previous days, months, and years.
Read more: A 3 day Odoo CRM implementation story!
Cloud-based ERP systems becoming the rage for medical equipment suppliers, it’s high time that you too invest in one, if not done already. Fingent helps you leverage the benefits of the open-source ERP systems mentioned above by understanding your unique business requirements. Because we know that this uniqueness is what gives you that competitive edge. Contact us to know more about how your business can benefit from ERP integration.
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How is AI poised to transform our future?
“Artificial Intelligence is the new electricity. It has the potential to transform every industry and create huge economic value”, says Chinese-English scientist and entrepreneur, Andrew Ng. The impact of artificial intelligence on our daily lives cannot be overlooked. From smartphones to ride-sharing apps, smart home devices, Google search, and Social media- there is hardly any industry or sector that is left untouched by AI.
There has been a huge surge in patenting of artificial intelligence in the last few years. PwC estimates that by 2030, AI would contribute a whopping $15.7 trillion to the global GDP. Analysis by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) states that the number of AI-related patent applications rose from 18,995 in 2013 to 55,660 in 2017. WIPO Director-General, Francis Gurry says that “We can expect a very significant number of new AI-based products, applications, and techniques that will alter our daily lives and also shape future human interaction with the machines we created”.
Industries such as healthcare, automotive, and financial services were the fastest to adopt AI.
Following are a few key domains that would be impacted most by AI in the coming years:
Related Reading: How AI Integration Helps Maximize Your Business ROI
AI will transform these areas in the coming years:
1. Transport
The general public would widely adopt self-driving vehicles. Apart from cars, self-driving vehicles would also include delivery trucks, autonomous delivery drones, and personal robots. Commutes may shift towards an on-demand approach like the Uber-style “cars as a service approach”. Commute-time would be viewed as a time to relax or just another way to work productively. People would live further away from their homes, reducing the need for parking space. This would change the face of modern cities.
However, enhanced connectivity, real-time tracking, traffic gauging, route calculations, peer-to-peer ride-sharing, and self-driving cars would be impossible without personal user data. This calls for the need to implement more stringent measures to secure the data and privacy of citizens.
2. Home/ service robots
Robots have already entered our homes in the past fifteen years. Recent advances in mechanical and AI technologies substantiate the increasing safety and reliability of using home robots. In the foreseeable future, we can expect special-purpose robots to deliver packages to our doors, clean offices and enhance security.
We are already familiar with the vacuum cleaning robot – Roomba, which has gained its place in millions of homes across the world. The AI capabilities of these kinds of robots are being increased rapidly with drastic improvements in the processing power and RAM capacity of low cost embedded processors. Low cost and safe robot arms are being used in research labs all over the world. Further advances enabled by deep learning will enable us to better interact with robots.
3. Healthcare
Healthcare is a promising domain for the use of AI technologies. AI-based applications have started gaining the trust of doctors, nurses, and patients. By revising the policies and other commercial regulations regarding the development and usage of such applications, AI can be used to improve health outcomes and quality of life for millions of people in the coming years. Patient monitoring, clinical decision support, remote patient monitoring, automated assists to perform surgeries, and healthcare management systems are some of the potential applications of AI in healthcare.
4. Education
AI has the potential to enhance education at all levels, by providing personalization at scale. While computer learning will not replace human teachers, Massive open online courses (MOOCs) will help students learn at their own pace with techniques that work for them. AI technologies such as Natural language processing, machine learning, and crowdsourcing are giving an impetus to online learning. If these technologies can be meaningfully integrated with face-to-face learning, AI will find more applications in our classrooms.
5. Entertainment
AI has already transformed this domain to a considerable extent. AI-driven entertainment is gaining huge traction and response from the masses with overwhelming enthusiasm. AI-enabled entertainment will become more interactive, personalized and engaging by 2030. However, the extent to which technology replaces or enhances sociability is debatable. More research is required to understand how to leverage these attributes of AI for the benefit of society.
Related Reading: Building Incredible Mobile Experiences by Combining AR and AI
Concerns about AI
Advances in AI have already impacted our lives. However, you may also have heard of the dire predictions regarding AI made by some of the brightest minds such as the late scientist Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk (Tesla and SpaceX chief). Pew Research Centre surveyed some 979 technology experts to find out whether advancing AI and related technology would help or harm humanity. 63% of the respondents were hopeful of a better future in 2030. Many of them said that all would go well only if the concerned authorities paid close attention to how these tools, platforms, and networks are engineered, distributed and updated.
Following were the concerns that were mentioned most often:
- Individuals would lose control over their lives due to the use of AI
- Surveillance and data systems that favor efficiency over human betterment would be dangerous.
- AI would cause millions of people to lose their jobs leading to economic and social upheaval.
- As people continue to depend on AI, their cognitive, social and survival skills would be diminished.
- Cybercrime, cyberwarfare and the possibility of essential organizations being endangered by weaponized information would open new facets of vulnerabilities.
Overcoming the concerns
Following are a few solutions to take positive advantages of AI:
- The global population should join hands and create cohesive approaches in tackling AI’s challenges.
- The development, policies, regulation, and certification of autonomous systems should undergo essential transformations to ensure that any kind of AI development would be directed towards the common good.
- Corporate and government organizations should shift their priorities towards the global advancement of humanity rather than profits and nationalism. AI advances should be aimed at human augmentation, regardless of economic class.
Nicholas Beale rightly said, “AI done right will empower.” As artificial intelligence continues to be embedded in most human endeavors, let us make broad changes for the better. Let us be more thoughtful about how these technologies are implemented constructively.
If you would like to know more about Fingent’s development and implementation approach on AI, give us a call.
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Mixed Reality Promising a New Improved Healthcare Industry
Mixed Reality makes it possible for surgeons to perform an operation on a patient thousands of miles away. It makes it possible for nurses to hone their skills and perform hundreds of operations virtually before even touching a patient. Mixed Reality is making the impossible possible.
Mixed Reality combines the real world with the virtual to create solutions that we never thought possible. It enables effective collaboration between physical and digital objects and has found an integral place and application in healthcare. This blog explores some radical ways in which healthcare is using Mixed Reality for better quality treatment and customer experience.
Mixed Reality Working Wonders in Healthcare
By 2026, AV/VR in the healthcare market is expected to reach 7.05 billion USD showing that Mixed Reality is finding increased application in the healthcare industry. From enabling pre-procedural planning and visualization before surgery to training nurses as they virtually workout challenges they could encounter during real-life procedures, and improving the collaboration and communication between doctors and patients – Mixed Reality is making great things happen. Here are some ways in which this is becoming possible.
1. Immersive Learning for Nurses and Medical Students
Skilled nurses are critical to the healthcare industry. Simulations are the most effective method of educating and preparing nurses to respond appropriately to a variety of situations they might encounter. Mixed Reality can place a nursing student in those specific or rare situations, which may be difficult to arrange for in real clinical settings. Such immersive simulations are much more cost-effective than traditional nursing simulation devices. The education company Pearson has collaborated with Microsoft to launch apps called HoloPatient and HoloHuman. These tools use holograms of patients and help in training healthcare professionals as they diagnose and treat medical problems.
As another achievement in Mixed Reality, St. George’s University in Grenada worked with SphereGen Technologies to develop what is called the ‘Learning Heart.’ The Learning Heart is a study aid that enables users to view the hologram of the heart from all directions and examine its functions. It responds to touch and voice commands and allows users to separate all the parts of the human heart, thus making learning immersive for medical students.
2. Reduced Time and Reduced Human Error in Reconstructive Surgery
Reconstructive surgeries enabled by Mixed Reality with the use of HoloLens have proven to be very successful at the Imperial College at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. According to the team guided by Dr. Philip Pratt, Mixed Reality helps surgeons locate and reconnect major blood vessels. With HoloLens, surgeons are able to use holographic overlays to see the bones and identify the course of blood vessels which aids them in their surgery, improving the outcome for the patient. An article in The Times entitled Holograms to get surgeons under the skin of patients showed examples of a 41-year-old man and an 85-year-old woman on whom such reconstructive surgeries were performed successfully.
3. Revolutionizing Surgery
In December 2017, Dr. Thomas Gregory undertook a live transplant surgery with the help of HoloLens. It helped him access the patient’s medical information and anatomical pictures in 3D during the surgery. Since HoloLens is a standalone computer worn like a helmet by the surgeon, his hands are free for surgery. Additionally, the use of microphones and sensors allows the surgeon to communicate with other surgeons in different parts of the world making collaboration easier. All these features, along with the simulations and information it can pull up, make Mixed Reality a valuable asset in improving surgical performance.
4. Improving the Patient Experience
Building trust through efficient communication is an important aspect of a doctor-patient relationship. Mixed Reality makes this possible in a more immersive way. For example, in a recent interview with Sirko Pelzl, CEO and CTO of apoQlar, he spoke about Virtual Surgery Intelligence (VSI) and said: “physicians can use VSI to show patients their own MRI scans and explain the surgical procedure in visual detail. We were able to illustrate in a recent study how greatly patients appreciated this education and communication.”
Mixed Reality also helps in reducing response time and improving surgical accuracy, which contributes to the smooth and successful patient experience. For example, when the surgery is complicated or the patient is critical, diagnostic images with Mixed Reality can serve as a twin of the patient. This helps doctors discuss, plan, and walk through their treatment protocol, thus reducing response time in patient care.
Mixed Reality also gives doctors all the information they need about a patient and enables real-life simulations to help him in his decisions and actions. Commenting on a prototype application called “Cinematic Rendering for Surgery” Christian Zapf, head of the Syngo Business Line at Siemens Healthineers said, “The error rate dropped from 14.1 to 0.8 percent for surgeons in training and from 11.1 percent to 0.8 percent for qualified surgeons.”
https://www.fingent.com/insights/portfolio/future-communication-security-using-augmented-reality/
The Future of Mixed Reality
Mixed Reality has already made deep inroads, especially in medicine. It will continue to improve the quality of healthcare and medical training as it positively impacts the medical industry. Fingent has helped many clients build custom healthcare software solutions, which integrate applications with the latest technologies like Mixed Reality. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss how we can make Mixed Reality possible for you.
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